Don’t worry they said, nobody will take your guns…

A big argument used by those advocating registration of all guns along with background checks has always been “don’t worry, this isn’t being used as a list to take your guns away”. Even Obama has given speeches saying guns won’t be taken away. Those of use who believe in keeping a skeptical eye on the government have felt this promise to be empty. And now us skeptics are being proven right.

Yesterday the Los Angeles Times has an article letting the citizens of California know that Governor Jerry Brown just signed a law to hire agents to take people’s guns away. The state will go after the guns of around 20,000 people who purchased their gun legally. Since buying these guns something has changed in the legal status of these citizens to disqualify them from being able to purchase a gun. This is nothing new in California. What is new is that the state is going to spend $24 million dollars to expand upon their gun confiscation program.

There are a few problems with this program; but I will keep this post down to a couple important points. First, many of those who are about to get their guns confiscated may not even realize they fall on the “naughty list”. To get on the disqualified list a person has to have certain criminal convictions, restraining orders, or mental illnesses. Since these people are not doing anything illegal with their guns they have no reason to believe the state has taken their second amendment right away. Remember the promise has always been “nobody will take your guns.”

Even people not worried about 2nd amendment rights should be worried about this gun confiscation based upon personal liberties. Here are a couple of snippets from a Bloomberg article on probable cause:

Merely being in a database of registered gun owners and having a “disqualifying event,” such as a felony conviction or restraining order, isn’t sufficient evidence for a search warrant, Marsh said March 5 during raids in San Bernardino County. So the agents often must talk their way into a residence to look for weapons, he said.

They had better luck in nearby Upland, where they seized three guns from the home of Lynette Phillips, 48, who’d been hospitalized for mental illness, and her husband, David. One gun was registered to her, two to him.

“The prohibited person can’t have access to a firearm,” regardless of who the registered owner is, said Michelle Gregory, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office.

Notice, they took all weapons from the house. Even the weapons that were not registered to the disqualified gun owner were confiscated. There was no probable cause to go after this person and no warrant issued. Is that what we are headed to: the constitutional protection of rights being ignored for people who are associated with the mentally ill.

I will end this post with a series of questions that everyone should consider in this debate.

Do we really want the government to decide who is mentally fit AND have the ability to take guns?

Should probably cause and constitutional rights be ignored for citizens just because something unrelated has changed in their life?

Should taxpayers be spending millions of dollars going after citizens that are committing no crimes with their guns? Or would that money be better spent going after actual criminal that commit crimes?

Would fewer people support expanded background checks if they believed it would lead to confiscation of guns?